The Zune HD is Microsoft's next big thing when it comes to mobile media, and aims to be a direct competitor to Apple's iPod touch line. To aid in the battle against Apple's current dominance, Microsoft will be offering a marketplace, as you may know, and a few days ago, an official image of it has been release.

Today the Expression Encoder Team has announced Expression Encoder 3. Expression Encoder 3 is part of the upcoming Expression Studio 3 suite and comes packed with new features such as support for H.264 and the new Smooth Streaming technology.

And it also brings another super cool feature: Screen Capture.

Today, screen-casting has become quite popular with bloggers. Screen-casting allows bloggers to share what they are looking at on their PC screen with readers of their blog. It’s a great way to show off really neat software experiences that people should see for themselves.

Malicious hackers are launching code execution exploits against new, unpatched vulnerability in the Microsoft Video ActiveX Control, the company warned in an advisory.

The attacks are currently targeting users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. “An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. When using Internet Explorer, code execution is remote and may not require any user intervention,” Microsoft said.

REDMOND, Wash. — July 10, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Austen Mulinder has been named corporate vice president of the Communications Sector, effective immediately. In this role, Mulinder will be responsible for leading and executing Microsoft’s sales and marketing strategy to telecommunications, hosting, media and entertainment companies. Mulinder will report to Simon Witts, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Enterprise and Partner Group.

Yesterday, Google announced that they plan to release a Chrome based OS.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks.

In a blog posting today, Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management at Google, confirmed that Chrome OS "will be available to use at no cost".

Google also revealed the list of companies it is working with:

• Acer
• Adobe
• ASUS
• Freescale
• Hewlett-Packard
• Lenovo
• Qualcomm
• Texas Instruments
• Toshiba

Although Sony and Dell are both absent from the list Google did say "among others" before the list above so it's entirely possible the company is still in negotiation with other OEMs.

Company officials confirmed that Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips. Google is currently working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year bundled with the new Chrome OS.

Source: Neowin

Windows 7 has made it up all the way to Build 7269, with Microsoft getting closer and closer to releasing the next iteration of Windows to manufacturing. The Redmond company indicated recently that the RTM deadline of Windows Vista's successor should be expected in late July 2009. In this regard, there are a few more weeks to wait until the company will warm up the development process and produce the Windows 7. Even though the software giant has failed to deliver a specific deadline, there are several clues pointing to the proximity of the RTM.

First off, Steven Sinofsky, formerly senior vice president, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, has already been upgraded to the new position of Windows Division President. And, secondly, there's an eerie quiet on the Windows 7 front, undoubtedly the quiet before the RTM storm. From the RTM-branch, Windows 7 Build 7264 was the last development milestone leaked and made available for download. Microsoft produced Windows 7 Build 6.1.7269.0.win7_rtm.090706-1900 on July 6, 2009 (according to Wzor), but this milestone has not made it into the wild yet. No telling at this time what is going to be the final build version of Windows 7.

Microsoft's Larry Osterman revealed that the build version was not inside knowledge.

Source: Softpedia
Discuss: Forums

Warner Bros. cartoon character Tweety Bird had best beware: Twitter is attempting to trademark the term “Tweet.” Don’t bother checking your calendar; it’s July, not April (Fool’s Day).

Seriously though, there are plenty of services opening up using the term Tweet, and although Tweet is a generic term (and thus may not be trademarkable), the company has every reason to try.

Source: RealTechNews

Microsoft will be addressing the issue discussed in Security Advisory 971778 concerning a vulnerability in DirectShow!

Microsoft will be releasing a total of 6 security bulletins consisting of:

· Three Critical updates affecting Windows.

· One Important update affecting Publisher.

· One Important update affecting Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server.

· One Important update affecting Virtual PC and Virtual Server.

More info Advance Notification for the July 2009 Security Bulletin Release

Source: Bink

Users of Computer Associates anti-virus software were complaining on Thursday after the company's anti-virus software mistakenly identified a Windows XP systems file as a virus.

Some customers were concerned that the Windows Service Pack 3 and files from the commercial Cygwin application files deleted when they couldn't find them. However, CA said the files were intact but quarantined and the file extensions were modified.

CA said it learned on Wednesday that its software had detected the file "Win32/AMalum.ZZQIA" as a false positive and was urging customers to update Signature 6606 to address the situation.

Source: HackInTheBox

Sony Electronics was early to offer HDTVs capable of connecting to the Internet, but the company has been missing one very obvious streaming video provider-until now. Today Sony unveiled its latest content partners, the most noteworthy of which is Netflix.

Netflix's Instant Queue video-on-demand is already available on devices from Microsoft (Xbox360 game console), LG Electronics (Blu-ray players and HDTVs), Roku (Digital Video Player) , Samsung (Blu-ray players), TiVo and Vizio.

In each of those instances but the Xbox 360, Netflix was a notable feature of a new device a consumer would have to purchase. Sony's partnership with Netflix is significant because it means that most Sony televisions from the past two years will be compatible with the service.